The mystery E coli outbreak that has killed 16 people escalated into a pan-European row on Tuesday as Germany admitted that tainted Spanish cucumbers were not the source of the outbreak after all.

Spain's minister for agriculture of the Andalusian regional government, Clara Aguilera, ate a homegrown cucumber on live television as she railed against a suggestion by Hamburg scientists last week that Iberian cucumbers were likely to blame for the outbreak, which claimed its first non-German victim on Thursday when a Swedish woman died shortly after returning from Germany.

"Germany accused Spain of being responsible for the E coli contamination in Germany, and it did it with no proof, causing irreparable damage to the Spanish production sector," said Spain's agriculture minister Rosa Aguilar.

French health minister Xavier Bertrand demanded greater transparency from Spain and Germany after three people in France became ill.

More than 1,000 people have been infected, 373 of whom are seriously ill.

Spanish farmers say fear of their produce is spreading in Europe. Customers are cancelling orders, and farm workers are being laid off in a country with 21% unemployment.

Some 150,000 tons of Spanish fruit and vegetables are piling up every week, with losses running at €200m (£175m) a week, according to Fepex, Spain's fruit and vegetable export body.

Spanish media reported that Germany, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Hungary, Sweden, Belgium and Russia have been banning Spanish cucumbers after what scientists say is one of the largest E coli outbreaks.

Spain would be demanding compensation for all European vegetable producers who had experienced losses because of the health scare, said Aguilar.

Within hours of her eating cucumber on television, the German agriculture secretary Robert Kloos said at an EU farm ministers meeting in Hungary: "Germany recognises that the Spanish cucumbers are not the cause."

Earlier, Spanish vegetable growers accused German authorities of covering up the real cause of the outbreak and asked the prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to intervene. Hospital authorities in the northern Spanish city of San Sebastián said they were investigating a suspected case of E coli in a patient who recently returned from Germany.

The source of the virulent strain of the bacteria is still not known, but scientists said the suspicions about vegetables or salads were well-founded since cattle manure used in fertiliser can harbour E coli. Hamburg's state health minister, Cornelia Prüfer-Storcks, who was the first official to point the finger at Spain last Thursday, has insisted that she was right to go public with preliminary test results from the Hamburg institute for hygiene and environment suggesting Spanish cucumbers were the source.

"It would have been irresponsible to withhold a well-founded suspicion given the high number of illnesses. Protecting life is more important than protecting financial interests," she said.But Prüfer-Storcks said tests on two cucumbers had found a different strain of E coli from that carried by patients in the city.

European Union officials have said the cucumbers could have been contaminated at any point along the route from Spain to Germany.

As bickering continues, the death toll rises. In Boras, Sweden, authorities announced the death of woman in her 50s who was admitted on 29 May after a trip to Germany. In Paderborn, Germany, the local council said an 87-year-old woman who also had other ailments had died. One American tourist has also been hospitalised in the Czech Republic with symptoms of E coli infection after also visiting Germany.

The national disease control centre in Germany said 373 people were sick with the most serious form of the outbreak, hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), a rare complication arising from an infection most commonly associated with E coli. That figure was up from the 329 reported on Monday.

Susanne Glasmacher, a spokeswoman for the Robert Koch Institute, said another 796 people have been affected by the bacteria making a total of more than 1,150 people infected. Germany's federal institute for risk assessment is still warning consumers in northern Germany to avoid all cucumbers, lettuces and raw tomatoes.

• This article was amended on 1 June 2011. Owing to an editing error, the original said that it was Spain's agriculture minister Rosa Aguilar who ate a cucumber on live television. This has been corrected.